Jazz review: Scorch Trio, Brolt

If Chris McGregor's jazz was made while the 60s free-form furnace was still hot, the Nordic guitar trio Scorch is an inheritor of that heat - lately travelling under labels such as death-jazz, punk-jazz or noise-jazz. The Norwegians sometimes sound like descendents of Hendrix or Cream, but with stream-of-consciousness drum and bass patterns. Their third album gives equal space to the eclectic guitarist and film-score writer Raoul Björkenheim (sometime accomplice of Jah Wobble and Bill Laswell) and the star pairing of bassist Ingebrigt Haaker Flaten and Paal Nilssen-Love. Björkenheim's yelping guitar entwines with a free-rockish ferocity early on; there's a more spacious feel to the jagged chords and raw percussion on the ghostly Basjen, and passages of cymbal-edge bowings or trombone-deep electronics. Graps has a fast, abstract-Cream feel, but the closing Bluering is a piece of percussion impressionism for the remarkable improv-meets-gamelan artist Nilssen-Love.